Impact of yoga and exercises on polycystic ovarian syndrome risk among adolescent schoolgirls in South India.

Background: To identify the adolescent school girls with risk for polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS), assess their risk status, and evaluate the impact of lifestyle modifications on PCOS risk reduction.

Methods: An experimental research was conducted among adolescent girls belonging to two Government run schools in Tiruvallur district of Tamil Nadu state, India, from 6 June to 9 December 2016. A standard risk assessment questionnaire was adopted for risk assessment after making few modifications (Cronbach alpha 0.

Sucrose metabolism gene families and their biological functions.

Sucrose, as the main product of photosynthesis, plays crucial roles in plant development. Although studies on general metabolism pathway were well documented, less information is available on the genome-wide identification of these genes, their expansion and evolutionary history as well as their biological functions. We focused on four sucrose metabolism related gene families including sucrose synthase, sucrose phosphate synthase, sucrose phosphate phosphatase and UDP-glucose pyrophosphorylase.

Identification and molecular characterization of tissue-preferred rice genes and their upstream regularly sequences on a genome-wide level.

Background: Gene upstream regularly sequences (URSs) can be used as one of the tools to annotate the biological functions of corresponding genes. In addition, tissue-preferred URSs are frequently used to drive the transgene expression exclusively in targeted tissues during plant transgenesis. Although many rice URSs have been molecularly characterized, it is still necessary and valuable to identify URSs that will benefit plant transformation and aid in analyzing gene function.

A novel binary T-vector with the GFP reporter gene for promoter characterization.

Several strategies have been developed to clone PCR fragments into desired vectors. However, most of commercially available T-vectors are not binary vectors and cannot be directly used for Agrobacterium-mediated plant genetic transformation. In this study, a novel binary T-vector was constructed by integrating two AhdI restriction sites into the backbone vector pCAMBIA 1300.

Genetic variation and expression diversity between grain and sweet sorghum lines.

Background: Biological scientists have long sought after understanding how genes and their structural/functional changes contribute to morphological diversity. Though both grain (BT×623) and sweet (Keller) sorghum lines originated from the same species Sorghum bicolor L., they exhibit obvious phenotypic variations.